GEG Communities
Newsletter
Issue No. 60 | Date: December 15, 2020
Local Success Stories from GEG
Well the end of 2020 is nearly here and what a year it has been. We’ve seen a huge increase in the use of technology to support learning and great strides taken by teachers to deliver teaching remotely. We’d like to take the time to thank all your GEG members for their incredible work throughout the year and also applaud all the leaders and captains for your dedication in supporting them to use Google Tools in the best possible way.
We know you are all working so incredibly hard to support your members and time is precious, but please continue to write and submit short articles for this newsletter. It helps leaders to see what is going on in other GEGs as well as their own and promotes the great work you are all doing.
We hope you get to take some time to relax and recuperate over the holiday season and returning in the new year rested and raring to go. Keep Googling, keep smiling, keep safe.
Submit your articles here please https://forms.gle/8RVKLfvZBw9HZevo6
GEG Leadership
Leading your GEGs
A huge congratulations for our Trainers of the Month for December 2020. Thank you for all your fantastic work.
Orna Mulhern (Ireland)
Member of GEG Ireland
Zach Dane (North America)
Member of GEG New York
GEG Events
Bring your community together to collaborate
GEG Oklahoma New Year Twitter Chat
Mark your calendars! #GEGOklahoma @OklahomaGeg first ever twitter chat event. Coming January 8 2021 hosted by @CamodeduTrainer The topic will be "Resources''.
New GEG’s launched Follow
Wonderful to see GEG Nuevo Léon launched on December 5, 2020.
Head over to their Twitter accounts and give them a follow.
GEG Ahmedabad
GEG Ahmedabad has been really busy. On Friday October 30, 2020 GEG Ahmedabad delivered a session on "How to register your school for GSuite for Education" and over 56 educators from different educational institutes joined the webinar and learned all about registering their school.
What a fantastic turnout for them. It looks like we will soon have many more schools enjoying the Google experience for their staff and students.
They also delivered a level 1 bootcamp on November 6- 8, 2020 with great feedback from the over 90 teachers that attended.
See the playlist here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL20BEvNvFlIFiK9rSIH1Xn5i68EBuXTHR
GEG Ohio and GEG UK
November saw GEG Ohio talk about the move to Google Workspace, the depreciation of Expeditions and Daren White from GEG UK showcased his MyEdTech Buddy #Via20 Google Innovator project.
See the recording here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is0md-JIyEE
GEG Brazil - GEG On Air #30
Accessibility and Inclusion with G Suite for Education tools was the subject of the 30th GEG On Air. Do you know how to easily create activities using Google Slides making them accessible to blind and deaf students? What are the simple tips for teachers to make students with disabilities feel included? All these and other special questions were answered live by Patrícia Regina - GEG Niterói, Danilo Batista - GEG Aracaju and Roberta Taffarello - GEG Vinhedo. Gisele Mendes - GEG Jacareí, Rejane Cassiano GEG Contagem and André César Gomes - GEG Olinda kindly supported us taking meeting notes at bit.ly/roteirogegonair30. Special thanks to you all!
GEG Gyeonggi
Judy Kim, the leader of GEG Gyeonggi, Korea was invited to the 16th APEC Future Education Forum and the 18th International ALCoB Conference on November 26, 2020. Judy is the first woman Google Certified Innovator and Trainer in Korea.
The APEC Future Education Forum is known as the largest and the longest annual education forum in Asia-Pacific region. It was first initiated by the Republic of Korea in 2004.
The theme of the 16th APEC Future Education Forum and related events is “APEC’s Innovative Educational Responses to Global Pandemic and Challenges” and APEC’s educational policymakers, scholars, educators, and officials from the international organizations presented and discussed in regard to the educational challenges during the pandemic.
Judy Kim presented about advancing Educational Equity to over 100 government officials, scholars, experts, professors, entrepreneurs and teachers, about using online education and digital technology. She introduced how Google educator groups have been globally communicating, collaborating and cooperating utilizing digital technologies to enhance educational equity during COVID19 pandemic crisis. She also emphasized the importance of global connectivity and partnership to creatively utilize new technologies and shrink long-standing equity and accessibility gaps in education.
YouTube Link (Judy’s presentation starts at 4:33:28)
GEG Learn
Individual professional development opportunities
Google Arts and Culture
If you haven’t already explored this amazing site, it really is the time to do it. At a point in time where many are in lockdown and places of culture are closed, we can still visit museums online and learn about culture, people, places and artwork from our homes. Some of the activities and features on the site include:
Exploring artworks in high definition
360 degree videos
Weekly highlights into collections
Gaming experiments such as cultural crosswords, puzzle party and art colouring books
Exploring closed museums in street view
With the depreciation on TourBuilder and Google Expeditions, Google will also migrate many of the Expeditions VR tours to Google Arts & Culture’s free site and application so they are available to everyone. As Arts & Culture expands, the Google Expeditions app will no longer be available for download and Tour Creator will no longer be accessible on June 30, 2021.
If you download the app you can also play with Art Filter, Galleries and Art Selfies
9 Chromebook and G Suite for Education features to make learning more accessible
New features such as
Live Captioning in more languages; German, French, Spanish and Portuguese.
When using kiosk mode for testing, Chromebook accessibility features are now more readily available.
Students can use voice commands to carry out actions in G Suite such as navigating, selecting, and editing in Google Docs, sending emails in Gmail, and joining or leaving Google Meet and customizable- like screen readers, magnification, and more.
Wow so many really useful features to make the tools more accessible to staff and students.